Despite missing blueprints, plans to turn the police station
into a brewpub or restaurant are steaming ahead.
Despite missing blueprints, plans to turn the police station into a brewpub or restaurant are steaming ahead.
Of the three groups interested, a consortium headed by Morgan Hill resident Rick Page, with practiced brew pub owners on board, has made the most progress to date, but it’s still early days. Geno and Cindy Acevedo of El Toro Brewing Co. and Louie Pappas from the Bold Knight in San Jose are also hard at work with their own plans.
Proposals are due in for city staff review by Oct. 20 but the City Council/Redevelopment Agency will likely not likely have to choose between them before the end of the year, according to Garrett Toy, director of city Building Assistance and Housing Services.
The police department will be moving from its building on Monterey Road and West Main Avenue, into a larger and more appropriate, recently purchased building on Vineyard Avenue in 2004, once it is retrofitted with holding cells and other law enforcement niceties.
The current building’s original blueprints from 1963 cannot be found, which somewhat hampers the architectural progress. Drawings from the 1989 remodel from the Bank of America into the police building do exist, Acevedo said, but lack details on such critical items as how much load certain walls were designed to hold. Architects require these facts before removing walls or moving beams around, necessary for turning a rabbit warren of a building into a restaurant with pleasing open space.
Page said the city told him the building was a concrete tilt-up, popular in Silicon Valley’s quick architecture but, he said, the second floor shows a wood frame. Without the original plans, Page said, the necessary seismic upgrades would be more difficult and, possibly, more extensive.
The City Council reserved $20,000 for technical assistance, intending to help all three groups in discovering the project’s magnitude. Toy said the money was used for two items needed in common. First was a phase one environmental assessment that determined if there were hazardous materials or conditions on the site – oil leaks, asbestos or lead paint. The city also provided a building code analysis.
“These were some things to keep in mind if the building was converted to a restaurant,” Toy said.
How speedily the proposals reach the RDA depend on the kind of information provided by the applicants.
“It all depends if we can compare apples to apples,” Toy said.
The Page group has already prepared elevations – drawings of the building’s new façade and interior – for what they will call the Morgan Hill Brewing Company if they get the nod from the city. Charles Weston of Weston Miles Architects is providing architectural services.
Weston designed and built the Cornerstone Building on the northeast corner of Monterey Road and Third Street. That building, which houses the House of Bagels, Dezign and the Weston Miles Architects offices, is not unlike his exterior drawings for the “brewing company.”
Page said much of the police building’s interior would have to be removed to open up space for the restaurant and a bar, with a balcony overhead to allow for “people-watching” tables.
“The toughest part is the Main Avenue elevation,” Page said.
Glass blocks, lit at night, and false pilasters (column-like design features) will help add interest to what is now a blank masonry wall, he said.
“We adopted some existing styles,” Page said, “including the Votaw Building (the 1905 building at Monterey Road and East Second Street), the depot (on Depot and Third streets), the Britton Auditorium and some from the old Morgan Hill School and the church.” He said the approach was to find designs that would work in downtown.
The roof will be raised, large windows added and the main entrance will face Monterey Road with atrium doors open to a large patio facing the present parking lot, where diners can enjoy. Not everything will change, though.
“We will keep the vault,” Page said. Before it was a police station, the building housed the Bank of America. Page hasn’t yet decided what to use the vault for but it is too good a feature to ignore.
An open kitchen – always an attention-getter – is part of Weston’s design as are gentle colors: summer wheat, light brown, beiges and greens.
“We want to make something distinctive,” Page said. “This really is a gem,” he said. “Whether you are going north to south or south to north on Monterey, you will be able to see how busy we are.”
Joining Page, who works for Apple Computer and is a member of the Parks and Recreation Commission, is Bob Stoddard of Sunnyvale’s Stoddard Brewing Co. Craig Kennedy and Ron Erskine of Gilroy’s Coast Range Brewing Co. and Mike Miller, who is in commercial real estate. All live in Morgan Hill except Stoddard, who lives just up the road in Coyote.
Larry Kent of Gilroy’s Kent Construction, which rebuilt an old church into the Morgan Hill Community Playhouse, is part of the construction team.
“We’re ready to go to the Architectural Review Board,” Page said. He is sure Morgan Hill is ready for a family friendly brew pub, with good food, pleasant ambiance and more good beer.
“Just look at J.R. Brewski’s in Gilroy,” he said. “It’s always packed.”
The Acevedos are also hampered by the disappearing structural plans. Their architect, from Exclaim Designs, who flew out from Phoenix for a site visit, could have used more information.
“It would have been nice to know if we can keep a particular wall,” Cindy Acevedo said. Exclaim Designs works specifically with restaurant and hospitality industry designs. The Acevedos said they preferred to wait until they present their proposal to the city before going public with their design ideas.
Pat Forst acts as broker for the Bold Knight’s Pappas. She said Wednesday that they will put a package together next week after talking with their construction consultant and may propose some major changes.
“We will probably gut the whole thing,” Forst said.
A Bold Knight restaurant would take up the ground floor and banquet or conference rooms on the second.
“We’d probably have to add an elevator,” she said. Pappas has not yet hired an architect.
“We have to get the bid first,” Forst said. The Bold Knight is a well-established restaurant in San Jose, located on Monterey Road near San Jose Avenue.
“I’m confident that the city will choose the best project,” Page said. “(Renovation of this building) is so important because it has such a high profile.” He said if he was not successful in this bid the group would try again, elsewhere in town.
The city has purchsed an empty, unfinished 43,000-square-foot industrial building on Vineyard Avenue, just north of Tennant Avenue, that will be remodeled into the police station. The current timeline calls for the department to be in its new facility in fall 2004.
